Kneron

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Kneron is a San Diego and Taiwan-based semiconductor company specializing in edge AI processors and neural processing units (NPUs). It is known for developing energy-efficient AI chips that enable on-device machine learning for applications such as smart home devices, security cameras, and automotive systems.

3 interview notes · updated Jul 2026

Kneron·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Jun 2026

Kneron Software Engineer OA, one coding problem involving a paginated REST API and some date filtering logic. Not the hardest thing I've ever seen but there were enough moving parts to trip you up if you weren't careful.

Implement a function that queries a paginated IoT device API by status, then returns the count of devices that were added in a given month/year and have a rootThreshold value above a specified threshold.

“The pagination part is fine, loop through pages until you hit the last one.”

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Kneron·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026

Interviewed for a software engineer role at Kneron and got a fairly involved algorithmic problem involving a simulation on an array. Not a typical sorting or greedy question, took me a minute to figure out what data structure actually makes sense here.

You have an array of positive integers representing product weights. Repeatedly pick the lightest element (breaking ties by smallest current index), add its weight to a running total, and remove it along with up to its two immediate neighbors in the current array. Return the final total once all elements are gone.

“Took me longer than I'd like to admit to nail down the neighbor logic.”

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Kneron·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2026

Kneron SWE interview had at least one algorithmic optimization problem that felt more like a math puzzle than a coding exercise. Short but made me think.

In a distributed system, total runtime is O(n/k + k^2) where n is dataset size and k is the number of machines. What value of k approximately minimizes this total runtime?

“I stared at this for a second because it looks like a calculus problem dressed up as a CS question.”

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